Alicja Kwade to unveil a

Permanent sculpture in New York next year

Apermanent sculpture titled Solid Sky by the German-Polish artist Alicja Kwade will be unveiled in New York early next year. The commissioned work, which has been produced for an undisclosed amount, is part of the revitalization project of the Philip Johnson and John Burgeedesigned corporate tower 550 Madison in Manhattan, whose previous tenants included AT&T and Sony Music. The 37-storey Midtown skyscraper was completed in 1984 and has been under renovation since 2016, after it was purchased by the Saudi investment firm Olayan Group. In 2018, it became designated a city landmark.

The work comprises of 22,000 kilograms polished spherical stone suspended from the ceiling of the glassbox lobby with stainless steel chains. It is made from a rare quartzite called Azul do Macaúbas that was quarried in northeastern Brazil (and only exists otherwise in few parts of Africa) and contains various intensities of blue delineated by white veins.

The work follows the PolishGerman artist’s acclaimed sculptural project ParaPivot (2019) at the Metropolitan Museum of

Art, which engulfed the museum’s rooftop with a constellation of stone spheres installed on intersecting steel grids. The constellation, Kwade said, evoked the solar system.

“This rock is the result of a metamorphosis that took place over one billion years ago, and a metamorphosis always has something metaphysical and magical about it,” Kwade tells. “We cannot fathom such a period of time at all—it makes us feel small and unimportant and fills us with awe.”

The work comprises of 22,000 kilograms polished spherical stone suspended from the ceiling of the glassbox lobby with stainless steel chains.